William Wondriska I

 

I'm sorry, I have such a tiny picture of the juicy endpapers for this book by William Wondriska, but I wanted to share them anyway, one side has a prickle of spears the other juicy tomatoes. 

These images are from 'The Tomato Patch' by William Wondriska published in 1964. The linework is fantastic and the story about two kingdoms so full of weapons there is nowhere to grow fresh food, so they eat from tins and make more weapons. The kingdoms have no colour, then the two princes fortuitously wander into the forbidden forest and find a girl tending her tomatoes and you get a pop of amazing orange.

The girl sends each prince home with a tomato plant and from then on the kingdoms transform into happy, peaceful places where people tend the land and grow their food.